Katandola village located in the Sabaragamuwa Province, approximate 8km away from Elpitiya is lived by an estate community whose livelihood is flourished on the crops of tea, rubber and coconut. The village temple Daham Lena Aranya is the highlight of the village and, for years there was a need for an image house for the temple. The temple was built with the immense contributions of the villages for materials and labour and they held the pride of building and owning it and the raised platform refers to their respect towards the Buddhist Philosophy. This has created the community more united over good cause of action and the honest interest of the village and becoming better citizens.
The entrance to the main temple entrance is in alignment or in the same axis with the entrance to the image house. The architect also wanted to raise the platform where the Buddha statue sits for keeping it the heist hierarchical point to observe and to worship. The form of hexagon platform and roof was selected to create the balance from all sided externally and internally. Because of the hexagon plan form, the platform and the walking path around the Buddha statue could accommodated with ease allowing enough space for circulation. The roof on the top depicts the traditional wood craftsmanship highlight the statue charmingly by having a geometrically balance with traditional details of rafters and placing the statue pinnacle aligning the highest peak of the roof. The Buddha statue is casted with a personally know artist to the architect carefully to bring the best expressions of stature to make the pilgrims to get inspired with its 'arshirwada mudra'.
Since the image house is surrounded by a lush vegetation of tall trees, the openness of the structure welcomes breeze but visually contained focusing the Buddha statue. Furthermore the spherical lotus podium where the Buddha statue is sit on and its floral lotus detail highlights the purity. The slender support light grey color (cement textured) columns around the roof with the lotus flower motif is done carefully to create a divine floating expression to make it light weight. Similar traditional feature of the moon stone at the entrance bring the image house expresses a traditional belongingness of the place.
To make a purpose of the raised platform while keeping the Buddha statue at a higher elevation, a library containing religious text is placed for the villagers use to bring them more close to the religion
